The present invention relates in general to a protection system for one-layer or multi-layer brick walls, such as brick wall partitions in industrial furnaces, particularly heating walls in coke ovens or coke-oven-type industrial furnaces, which are subject both to thermal and mechanical loads and deformations. In particular, this invention relates to a clamping system for preventing such tensile and shearing stresses in the brick wall partitions of this kind, the system including clamping plates adjoining opposite faces of a brick wall partition, cross tie rods by means of which clamping forces are applied against the clamping plates by means of yoke-shaped beams and interposed springs or spacer pieces. In the following text; the terms a "brick wall" or a "brick wall partition" or a "brick wall plate" are interchangeable with the term "a heating wall in a coke-oven-type industrial furnace".
In larger surfaces of brick wall partitions, the unavoidable thermal and mechanical deformations increase proportionally with the second or higher power of the height of the brick wall partition, that is in an excessive proportion to the height of the brick wall partition. As a consequence, if the clamping system designed for such increased forces is correspondingly more rigid, the changes in temperature and in operational loads result in uncontrollable regrouping or rearrangement of clamping forces, which frequently attain extreme and unacceptable values; that is, the brick wall partition is subject to excessive loads at some points, whereas at other points insufficient clamping forces are present. Due to these differences, undue stresses are generated.